Diane and I had an interesting couple of transactions.
Around the holidays, Diane and I went to one of the big box retail stores and
bought her Mom a couple of boxes of disposable heating pads for a sore
shoulder. I used the Apple Pay app on my watch to pay for the pads. Last week her
Mom let us know she did not need the second box so Diane brought that box back
today with the original receipt.
There was some confusion at the store about
the credit card number on the original receipt because it did not match either
of the two cards Diane and I have. We were concerned the original transaction
may have gone on someone else’s card and, with us returning the heating pads and
getting credit on one of our cards, we may have gotten ourselves in some kind
of trouble.
When Diane got home we looked at our credit
card detail and sure enough – the $77.85 we spent on December 27 was listed. So,
why was the last four unknown (to us) digits wrong on the original receipt? A
little more digging found similar receipts with the same unknown four digit
number for Apple Pay purchases.
With a little investigating, we were able to
figure out what happened. When you use
Apple pay the card number on the receipt reflects your device ID, not
the last 4 digits of your credit card. There is also no name on the receipt –
it will be listed as “Contactless”. This way if you drop a receipt and someone
picks it up there is no way you can be identified. It has no personal
information on it. If you use Apple Pay check it out the next time you buy
something using it.
Not having to take may card out of my wallet, no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on the receipt...... added privacy and security – good stuff!
